A Stepn Back From Nuclear Brink Both Sides Say: It's A Beginning

September 19, 1987|By KNT News Service

WASHINGTON — The United States and the Soviet Union Friday stood on the brink of a new era of detente, far more promising in its potential for curbing the nuclear arms race than any similar period in the last generation.

That is the apparent meaning of an ''agreement in principle'' to conclude an intermediate range nuclear arms treaty, as announced by President Reagan and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.

An entire class of nuclear weapons will be dismantled and destroyed, but it will not end the arms race or even make a serious dent in its astronomical numbers. By the best available count both sides will continue to have more than 11,000 long-range strategic warheads that will not be touched.

But Secretary of State George Shultz said Friday, ''It's a beginning, and it's an important beginning because . . . maybe we've seen this thing crest, and will begin to come down in the number of nuclear weapons.''

Shevardnadze agreed, saying it was ''certainly a beginning, which we hope has to be, and will be, followed by a continuation.''

The difference between the agreement announced Friday and its predecessors during the Nixon and Carter administrations was dramatic.

Those agreements put ceilings on numbers of weapons, allowing each side to continue building more. This agreement calls for reductions.

But in a larger sense, what happened here, both sides seemed to agree, was the unfolding of a broad, and highly conciliatory new perspective by the Russians on U.S.-Soviet relations.

Shevardnadze described it as ''a new departure'' that ''contains new revolutionary thinking, new revolutionary spirit.''

He said its origins were outlined in an article Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev wrote earlier in the week for Pravda in which he called for ''new rules of co-existence'' aimed at ending the arms race.

Gorbachev said that nuclear weapons were ''the greatest evil and the most horrible threat'' facing civilization, and reiterated that the Soviet objective is to ''drastically reduce'' their numbers, eventually producing a ''nuclear weapon-free world.''

According to both American officials and Shevardnadze, progress was made during the meetings in many more areas than the agreement on intermediate weapons.

Both sides claimed advances in negotiations aimed at curbing long-range strategic weapons, by far the most threatening category of nuclear arms, and in such areas as human rights and regional disputes.

They announced a joint ''intensive effort'' to achieve 50 percent reductions in strategic offensive arms, and disclosed that they closed the gap in at least two major areas of disagreement.

One American official explained the progress this way: ''Shevardnadze came to deal.''

Said another: ''They haven't talked this good in the last 30 years.''

Asked at a news conference in the Soviet Embassy here whether the agreement represented the beginning of a period of detente, Shevardnadze said:

''Yes, I believe this is the beginning of a new period . . . a very substantive, a very good material basis for that new period. . . . In a way it is also a reflection of the beginning of detente.''

Said Shultz in answer to a similar question: ''Well, things have changed tremendously in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union . . . So there is movement. I wouldn't want to put a label on it.''

Reagan may claim, as some of his aides are already doing, that the agreement confirms the wisdom of a hard-line policy toward the Soviets, backed by an immense military buildup.

The trail leading to the agreement began at the Reykjavik, Iceland, summit meeting last November. There the Soviets first began making major concessions in arms negotiations -- but tied all of them to a requirement that Reagan agree to curb the Star Wars missile defense program.

When Reagan refused, and the summit fell apart, the situation appeared grim. But Gorbachev relented last February, agreeing to separate INF negotiations.

In April he agreed to eliminate short-range missiles that had concerned the United States, and he agreed in July to take out missiles in Asia.

Possibly the most promising long-term development in these talks was a new Soviet position on what are called ''sub-limits'' in the still stalemated negotiations on long-range strategic weapons.

The Soviets already had agreed to cut their long-range arsenal by about 50 percent -- to a ceiling of 6,000.

But the United States wanted sub-limits for various categories of weapons within that 6,000 figure, primarily to force a cutback in the largest and most powerful land-based Soviet missiles. The Soviets resisted.

Shevardnadze and Shultz said that the Soviets will accept a 60 percent sub-limit for any one category of weapon -- which would mean no more than 3,600.

That brings them very close to the American negotiating figure, of 3,300.

Shevardnadze also made clear that the Soviets are willing to cut their large missile forces in half, to 154, and to limit warheads on these missiles to 1,540.

Shultz said this was a significant concession because the Russians have accepted the American emphasis on limiting warheads, not just missiles.